Open Practice: Demystifying and Secularizing the Path to Enlightenment

Prologue

clouds passing by

I am sitting in front of my computer staring at a blank page. A faint recollection of a dream I had last night bubbles up in my awareness. I dreamt of a black expanse where everyday reality is projected. It was like watching a movie in a very dark theater where the only thing you can see is the movie screen. But the movie screen was not the typical rectangular wide screen. The screen filled my entire field of vision but I was somehow still aware of the background. I was disoriented. I was not in the movie but the movie is inside me, and I couldn’t even remember what was playing. Then I attempted to analyze—“is this the nondual?” There was no answer. My awareness dissolved in the abyss of slumber, and all that was left was the impression of the experience.

Just like web pages, our awareness comes and goes within the vast expanse of cyberspace.

I wrote the above account during my early days of blogging. It was from a lucid dream I had a few years back. It serves as a reminder why I continue to blog my heart out.

A lot has happened since I started blogging five years ago, in my personal sphere and in the global stage. In the technological domain of cyberspace, the explosion of social media–social networks, photo-sharing, video-sharing, lifestreaming applications–is happening so fast that it’s virtually impossible to catch up with all of them. To adapt to these changes I decided to take the opposite route. I slowed down with my blogging and shifted to what I call (hyper)streaming.

Like blogging, I consider (hyper)streaming as part of my “spiritual” practice. I do my best to infuse it with passion and compassion. However, regular and long-time readers would have noticed by now that I rarely post about my actual practice. This is simply because I didn’t have any consistent practice, in the traditional sense of the word. It would’ve been hypocritical of me to talk about meditation without actually doing it. That’s why, for the most part, I just link to helpful information and reliable sources. But, obviously, linking to information about practice is not the same as actually doing the practice. Information is helpful to understand concepts, develop intelligence, and inform my philosophy, but by itself it won’t get me “there.”

the past and the future are amorphous, the present is an illusion, to “awaken” is the goal, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun in the process. this blog site is all about that… awakening while having fun.

So what I mean by “there” is none other than the ultimate prize: satori, moksha, arahatship, liberation, awakening, enlightenment.

Now that I got that out of the way…

I’ve been a student of “spirituality” for more than two decades now. I still remember picking up my first esoteric booklet, Easy Journey to Other Planets, when I was in high school. Yes, I was that gullible 🙂 That was my first time to read about meditation, chanting, mantra, and other esoteric teachings. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time (and money) reading books, listening to different teachers, trying out different practices, while keeping a healthy dose of skepticism. It felt good to know a lot of information regarding the concepts and process of awakening. However, one very important thing I lacked was the discipline to pick and stick with a practice. For years I would just dabble with different practices. My practice was on and off, but for the most part it was off. I’ve been chasing too many rabbits and I still haven’t caught one.

The bottom line is: Intellect is no substitute for actual experience. That’s why I made this affirmation a month ago:

Change begins with me. I commit to investigate and understand the true nature of the sensations that make up reality, so clearly, that I become awake and compelled to take action with passion and compassion.

Since then I’ve been consistent with my meditation practice. Previously I could only endure sitting meditation for no more than thirty minutes, but for the past month I’ve been sitting in meditation for more than one hour per sitting and more than two hours a day. This positive feedback rekindled my passion for sitting practice. I realized that all I needed was proper technique, excellent teachers, and good motivation to pick and stick with a practice. It took me years of intellectual pursuit to really understand this. I’ve been a slow learner. Then again, I’m also a believer in the old Zen saying, “When the student is ready, the Master appears.” I’ve never felt more ready. I now understand that my path is Theravada, and my practice is Vipassana.

This leads me to the main topic of this post. Starting today I’m introducing a new category which I call, Open Practice.

What is Open Practice?

Open Practice is a journal of my “spiritual” practice, or simply, practice. In the spirit of Open source and active learning, I will attempt to share as best as I can, my approach, techniques, information, and subjective experiences, in a matter-of-factness way, as I undergo the process of awakening. My goal is not only to awaken, but also to demystify and secularize the path to enlightenment. This sounds like a lofty and arrogant goal. It is. But it’s better to shoot for the moon than to get lost in its reflection.

Open Practice is a work in progress. I’ll flesh it out as I go along. But for starters here are some of its concepts.

What Open Practice is:

A matter-of-fact reporting of empirical subjective experiences. From this perspective Open Practice is an experiment. I’ll be playing the role of the”subject” of study. Readers play the role of science researchers who are gathering data points of subjective experiences. These data points can then be compared with religious, spiritual, psychological, and medical literature and used for further research on the “science of enlightenment.”

Active learning. A good way of learning and embodying a practice is to talk about it and be proficient with its language and terminology. Creating a journal of my practice is one way of active learning.

Open-sharing of techniques. I believe that there’s no one-size-fits-all awakening technology. We groove with what tickles our fancy. Meditation techniques that work for other people don’t work for others. I’ll do my best to document the techniques that work for me and share it with others.

Increasing serendipitous understanding and meetings. One thing I learned in my years of blogging is that open-sharing leads to targeted serendipity–attracting other people who are openly sharing knowledge and information. This is a beneficial feedback loop that results in adding to our understanding of concepts through healthy dharma discussions and meeting other people online and offline, which then could lead to other serendipitous discoveries. Trust me on this. It’s the law of karma 🙂

Inspiring others to pick up a practice. Hopefully, this would inspire people to question religious dogma and explore the deeper dimensions of the mystical core of their religious traditions. “The kingdom of God is within.” The doorway is practice and the fruition is Grace.

What Open Practice is Not:

Bragging about attainments. This is not about showing off and proclaiming how good we are in our practice. There’s no place for our delusions of grandeur here.

My teacher and method is better than yours. See open-sharing of techniques. But if you really think and believe that your method is the best, don’t tell. Show and prove it.

Useless lemon-eating debates based on parroting and hearsay rather than experiential knowledge. If you’ve read this far, then this should be self-explanatory 😉

Who are invited?

Everyone. If you have a blog (or lifestream), you’re a dedicated spiritual practitioner, and you don’t mind openly sharing your practice to everyone, then I encourage you to participate and start your own Open Practice. Let’s all step out in the open as we tread the path of awakening. And if along the way people raise their eyebrows and ask us what the heck are we doing and what this path is all about, here’s something we can tell them:

If anybody asks you what the Path is about,
It’s about generosity.
It’s about morality.
It’s about concentration.
It’s about gaining insight through
focused self-observation.
It’s about the cultivation of subjective states
of compassion and love based on insight.
And it’s about translating that compassion
and love into actions in the real world.